Archive for January, 2008

All Mixed Up: Scrabulous and the Realpolitik of IP

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

In 2005, two brothers in Kolkata, India launched Scrabulous, an online implementation of the board game Scrabble. With a few thousand regular players, it wasn’t about to replace World of Warcraft in the annals of online gaming. But in 2007, they took the suggestion of a regular ...

Europeans Crush “California Champagne”

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Its not often that a small country like Belgium would have the bravado to take on the world's superpower. But earlier this year David literally crushed Goliath in a geographical indicators dispute between the old and new worlds. It was reported on January 10, 2008 that 3,200 bottles of André sparkling ...

Music Previews: Should Use of a Marketing Tool be Considered Fair Dealing for the Purpose of Research?

Monday, January 28th, 2008

In October 2007, the Copyright Board of Canada rendered a decision regarding tariffs payable to SOCAN by online music services.[1] As part of the Board’s decision it concluded that music previews do not infringe copyright as they constitute fair dealing for the purpose of research. While I agree in principle ...

Is content blocking coming to Canada?

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

According to this story in the Globe and Mail, the music industry is keen on getting Internet service providers (ISPs) to block traffic for users who sharing copyrighted music files. Canadian ISPs like Bell and Rogers already shape traffic to some extent by limiting the amount of bandwidth available to ...